a thing I hate is when people think of me as someone who “likes books.” not because I don’t, obviously I do, but because it reduces it to the level of like, “being a gamer,” or of “liking coffee.” it sounds like it’s merely a consumer choice, designating which market demographic I belong to. people have even bought me novelty socks with stacks of books on them.
to be sure, plenty of people do “like books” in exactly this way. people who participate in library book clubs, most high school literature teachers, even many academics. all people who “love books.” I would say I don’t begrudge them this, but I do, because it cheapens the power of books.
reading Nietzsche or Shakespeare or Flaubert or Plato can and should push someone to radically examine what it means to be alive. taking seriously what reading does to you, how it alters you, forces you to confront fundamental truths of the human condition, this can and should inspire commitment to living more fully, to treating your life not as something to slink through, making as little trouble as possible, but as an opportunity to experience the drama of the cosmos as directly as possible, as a bodhisattva would, or a Romantic would.
I say all this not because I’m particularly good at burning burning burning, Kerouac-style, but in the hopes that I don’t end up as someone who merely “likes books.”
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